Who needs another shiny rectangle in their lives?
Plenty of people, if the queues outside Apple stores worldwide was anything to go by.
I was at Apple‘s London flagship shop on Regent Street this morning to ask people why they’d waited for hours to splash upwards of £429 on an iPad:
Sten, from Estonia but working in London: “The main reason [for buying today] is Apple released a new product! Nobody has a real reason for buying them but they do it anyway.”
Jason, a student in London: “I was here at 1am, number 31 in the queue. By 5am the queue was around the block. I’ll probably use it to take notes in lectures. It’s not as backbreaking to carry around as my Macbook. I was inside the store for over two hours because I tried to sign up to Orange 3G. You have to go through their website to sign up to it and it’s all screwed up. O2′s [registration] was simple, on the iPad itself.”
Catherine, from Paris:”It’s for the family to surf on the web, look up answers to questions when we are having dinner, read books when travelling and watch movies. I bought two, a 3G and the entry-level WiFi version which is for my 70-year-old mother in law. She’s struggled with a laptop for the last couple of years and this will be much more intuitive.”
John, from West London: “I want to sit in meetings and write notes with it. But it’ll be a miracle if it recognises my handwriting.”
Bill, from Manchester:”I needed something that would travel with me and be easy to use. I’m sick of trying to make [3G] dongles work.”
Sam, from London: “My company builds web apps. We are really interested in how the iPad changes the way people buy things online and use the web.”
Damian, from Essex:”It’s a nice-to-have, a luxury item. It was a spur of the moment thing but I queued for about an hour. Primarily it’s for browsing the web while I’m watching TV.”
Mark, from London: “I work for the publishing industry, we supply e-books to the Apple store. The publishing industry is changing massively and we have to keep up with what the public and the authors want. Authors expect you to be cutting edge, or they could go to another publishing house.”
Graham, from London: “I bought two, one for my partner because I think she’ll be jealous. This is just an extension [to my iPhone] but it’s more practical.”
Of the people canvassed by the FT as they exited the Apple store – who were overwhelmingly male, but of all ages – there was a pretty even split between WiFi-only and 3G version purchases, with a skew towards the more expensive 64GB models. A couple were first-time Apple customers, but many already had iPhones.
The lengthy queue outside – elongated perhaps by Apple’s policy of allowing buyers in only one at a time – attracted attention from passers by. Not everyone was as excited as those who emerged grinning from the store, one besuited chap calling the people lined up “saddos” while another lady was baffled when she found out what all the fuss was about: “I thought it was something important,” she gasped.
One gentleman, clutching the FT newspaper, walked up and down the queue before deciding it wasn’t worth the wait. But saying that he divided his time between London and rural France, he was very much looking forward to using the FT’s iPad app when he can’t get hold of a print edition. It will replace his current preferred method of reading in France, he said, which is printing out the front page.
Many of the people I spoke to in the line seemed unaware that branches of Currys and PC World were also selling the iPad just a few minutes’ walk away, with no queue. Their face crumpled in anguish as they balanced leaving a queue to which they had already dedicated up to two hours of their morning with the risk of leaving for a rival store, only to find their preferred model had sold out.
Apple’s stringent conditions for PC World and Currys’ 60-day exclusivity meant they were unable to publicise the launch in advance. One central London store, where buyers were almost outnumbered by staff first thing this morning, risked putting up a sign yesterday promising early opening today for an unnamed “exciting new product launch!!”.
And yes, after spending all morning interviewing breathless new iPad owners, your humble correspondent eventually caved and bought himself a WiFi-only, 16GB iPad (from Currys). For research purposes, obviously…
